First 5 minutes impressions Asus Eee Pc 901 and Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 5

Right, I just received my new smaller-than-a-notebook-device (exactly, I'm avoiding the word netbook not to create any misunderstandings...psion...) today. Unfortunately for me, Windows XP is installed and i had to configure the first settings until it was running. Now, most of you will know how the Asus Eee Pc 901 will look like, but I have to admit that it just looks better when it belongs to you than seeing it in a shop.

Alright, Windows XP runs fairly good I have to admit, though it's just not what I want on my computers. One important thing for me was to connect it to the Samsung LCD 40inch full HD TV. The Asus just took over - in Windows XP - the resolution of 1920x1080 of the TV. It just does look absolutely amazing!

Now, downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 5 - Jaunty Jackalope for those who don't like numbers - and I created a bootable USB stick and booted the Asus from the stick. I cannot remember having seen ANY computer that booted so fast from a USB stick. I booted into live session and the overall speed/performance was faster than what I'm using at work on my desktop where 9.04 is installed..go figure.

The well known problem of font size and resolution is really there. It looks awful and I had to re-size the fonts to 8 and the resolution from 134 (!) to 96 dpi. I also quickly changed the theme to look..not brown, connected the Samsung TV and switched to it. Resolution of 1920x1080 was shown without issues. The resolution of the 9inch lcd of the Asus was recognized without problems, WiFi was working out of the box as well as sound. This is my absolutely first experience with a device where I have absolutely no issues when starting or installing GNU/Linux. Ok, apart from font size which is not really a problem, but I'm amazed, compiz fusion is enabled by default. The redrawing of the windows, scaling etc. runs better than on my NVidia tablet. Do not forget I was running the Asus in live mode.

So here I am, waiting that Ubuntu 9.04 is installed on the Asus and then the configuration starts. Xfce and Gnome, maybe also KDE to see how it looks like.

Now there are numerous posts in forums and also a website where the Kernel-array (http://www.array.org/ubuntu/index.html) is a must if you want to run ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10 or similar GNU/Linux distros built on Ubuntu. I think the website owner Adam will have quite a lot of spare time once 9.04 will be released - I don't see the need for the Kernel-array since in 9.04 everything works until now.

For a small device i always wanted, with long battery life (4,5 to 5 hours) and with an Ubuntu experience I never had before, I think these 305 USD are the best investment I ever made in a computing device. I would not dare calling it a netbook, because i think it can do way more than just browsing the net.